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Set up an agile program following SAFe in the blink of an eye

Complex agile programs with ten or more teams pose great challenges for everyone involved:

How can process quality be assured with so many teams?

Which models, artifacts and documents need to be created in the course of the project and where and how will they be managed?

How can traceability be maintained for the product vision, epics, features, and user stories, all the way to the solution?

Where should the backlogs be set up and how should they be structured for program, increment, team and iteration planning?

How will teams keep an overview of the solution architecture?

What control instruments are required by the project and program managers?

As a program manager, those are only a few of the questions you’ll need to ask. objectiF RPM provides the answers with the specialized SAFe template.

Effortless set-up: with objectiF RPM for SAFe your complex multi-project with several Scrum teams will be up and running in no time

8 good reasons for using objectiF RPM for SAFe

Because "scalable" means more than just "scaled"

The SAFe template scales the approach of a single Scrum team for a large project with several agile teams working in parallel. But that’s not the end of the story. Sometimes at the beginning of a program the number of teams hasn’t been decided, and in some programs the number of teams is to be gradually increased or the need for more teams is only recognized once the project is underway. For these cases, the SAFe template provides planning patterns that allow you to add more teams and set up the corresponding infrastructure at the same time. A program based on the SAFe template can thus be scaled at any time to meet your current needs.

Because complexity can be mastered with structure

A program created with the SAFe template consists of increments. Several teams are involved in developing your solution. For each team, increments are subdivided into iterations. Iterations are carried out by teams simultaneously.

The central repository of the project – that is, result storage for all teams – is structured by the template. Predefined result types ensure standardization and uniform quality standards. Having the same results and structures recur for all teams in all increments and iterations provides good orientation and aids the program manager in mastering the complexity of the program.

Because traceability is indispensable

Epics, feature requirements, user stories and enablers play a central role in the planning and steering of an agile program. In addition to having relationships among themselves, they also have relationships with other results, such as stakeholders, their goals, personas, architecture designs, system components, test cases, tests, bugs and implementation files. In the program’s central repository all results are comprehensively stored together with their relationships.

This ensures traceability from requirements to code.

Because version control is a must

In an agile program created with the SAFe template, all results and their relationships are subject to version control. An automatically generated history makes it possible to trace the origin of each result. The history also allows for version comparisons and – when necessary – reverting to an older state.

The overall state of development for various results can be recorded by drawing a baseline. Ready-to-use configurations for the results of individual teams as well as whole increments make it possible to draw a baseline in just a few clicks.

Because program management is possible without the overhead

Setting up an agile program, dealing with initial planning, updating the plan – it’s possible to do all this while avoiding administrative overhead. Programs created with the SAFe template come with planning patterns that can be used to generate new increments, add teams to increments, and create iterations for a team. With patterns, it only takes a few clicks – and the initial program plan is also automatically updated.

Backlogs, user story boards and Kanban boards, agile metrics, analyses, dashboards – everything you need for planning and steering an agile program is automatically created for you when you use patterns.

Because program management requires transparency

Agile programs created with the SAFe template allow you to see at any moment which epics, feature requirements, user stories and results are being worked on. Quickly find out the state of requirements, reviews, test cases, tests, bugs, implementation files and documents. You can immediately ascertain the workload of teams and individual staff members. The same goes for incurred costs. The template contains real-time queries, analyses and dashboards which provide all this information and more.

Because product and process quality don’t take care of themselves

An agile program based on the SAFe template covers the entire path from product vision to solution. For each step along the way, the template provides predefined result types, document templates and forms. It also offers uniform mechanisms for increment, team and iteration planning. Standardized workflows facilitate reviews, test management and sub-processes, such as risk management. This standardization of processes and results ensures high process and product quality.

Because you do things differently

The SAFe template allows you to set up an agile program in just a few minutes. It saves you time and effort. But what happens if your organization works differently than what’s provided for in the template? In that case, simply modify the SAFe template in advance or adjust the generated project afterwards:

define new result types or modifying existing result types by adding new properties or editing them using dialog boxes and forms

Scope of the objectiF RPM for SAFe®template

Requirements Analysis

From stakeholder goals to the program backlog

Agile projects with multiple teams require a shared vision for everyone involved. But first of all who are the stakeholders? They need to be identified and their goals analyzed. After that, a shared vision can be developed and the first epics derived. For this purpose, creative techniques such as design thinking are useful. Afterwards, however, it’s advisable to store the results in the objectiF RPM repository. This allows you to review as a team – and even across distributed environments. At the same time, doing so sets the foundation for traceability from stakeholder goals to the implemented solution.

objectiF RPM for SAFe® offers:

stakeholder, goal, and context diagrams

standardized forms for stakeholders, goals, epics and more

a document template for generating the product vision as an MS Word or PDF file

Be confident about the quality of early results and ensure traceability of your agile program right from the start

Requirements Engineering

Organization and structure for epics, feature requirements and user stories

The high number of epics, feature requirements and user stories is a central challenge in large agile projects. Program managers, product owners and teams need to find a good way to deal with this. The solution lies in organization and structure.

objectiF RPM for SAFe® offers:

a central, preconfigured program backlog

patterns for structuring domains with simultaneous structuringing of the program backlog

PI Planning

From face to face event to traceable planning and steering

Following SAFe®, program increment (PI) planning should take place in the form of an interactive meeting with everyone involved. Many organisations already implement this practice. However, if decisions and planning measures are to remain traceable for all parties, they’ll need to be transferred from post-its and whiteboards into a digital format – and it’s best to take care of this right away during the PI meeting. With support for multiple users and internet interfaces, objectiF RPM makes this easy.

objectiF RPM for SAFe® offers the following support for PI planning:

planning patterns for generating increments and adding teams, including the creation of corresponding iterations, backlogs and Kanban boards

vision board, and goal and context diagrams for reviewing the vision and business context

architecture diagrams for reviewing the technical vision

ready-to-use workflows for increment, team and iteration planning

numerous dashboards and analyses for cost and team efficiency

A look at PI planning with objectiF RPM’s SAFe® template

Software Design and Implementation

Oversight and traceability all the way to code

Keeping the big picture in sight, understanding the architecture, keeping track of what teams are working on and how they’re doing it – that all becomes more and more difficult the further a large agile project proceeds. The solution lies in a shared graphical language, uniform methods for software design, and visualization of the relationships between solution elements.

real time analyses for architecture and requirements traceability up to code

Examples of instruments which objectiF RPM for SAFe® offers to ensure oversight and traceability:

configurable real-time analyses of the central program repository – here for traceability from epic to code.

models – here a block diagram with a satisfy relationship (“satisfy”) between feature requirement and service.

Risk Management

Ensure compliance

Especially in regulated industries, compliance is a central concern for large agile projects. Working with objectiF RPM for SAFe® means following a well-defined process, ensuring version control, creating a history for all results and allowing for configuration management. objectiF RPM for SAFe® takes another important concern into account – managing product risks, which is indispensable for the development of medical devices, for example.

Product risk management is supported with:

forms for creating and modifying central artifacts of risk management, including risks, threats, risk mitigations and vulnerable use scenarios

a Kanban board for controlling risk management

an event-based workflow for risk management

real-time analyses for risk situations and for the status of risk mitigation

Examples of risk management instruments: the Kanban board for risks and an analysis of the status of risk mitigation measures

SAFe® and Scaled Agile Framework® are registered trademarks of Scaled Agile Inc., which publishes comprehensive documentation of the framework on its website www.scaledagile.com